In Paul and Scripture, an international group of scholars discuss a range of topics related to the Apostle Paul and his relationship(s) with Jewish Scripture. The essays represent a broad spectrum of viewpoints, with some devoted to methodological issues, others to general patterns in Paul's uses of Scripture, and still others to specific letters or passages within the traditional Pauline canon (inclusive of the disputed letters). The end result is an overview of the various ways in which Paul the Apostle weaves into his writings the authority, content, and even wording of Jewish Scriptures.

In this ground-breaking book, based on archival and field research and previously unknown historical evidence, Maxim D. Shrayer introduces the work of Ilya Selvinsky, the first Jewish-Russian poet to depict the Holocaust (Shoah) in the occupied Soviet territories. In January 1942, while serving as a military journalist, Selvinsky witnessed the immediate aftermath of the massacre of thousands of Jews outside the Crimean city of Kerch, and thereafter composed and published poems about it. Shrayer painstakingly reconstructs the details of the Nazi atrocities witnessed by Selvinsky, and shows that in 1943, as Stalin's regime increasingly refused to report the annihilation of Jews in the occupied territories, Selvinsky paid a high price for his writings and actions. This book features over 60 rare photographs and illustrations and includes translations of Selvinsky's principal Shoah poems.

Based on evidence taken from a wide range of source material, Christina Scham employs an innovative excl usive approach to the study of Jewish scribes and their role in the Second-Temple period. '

The ninth volume of this edition, translation, and commentary of the Jerusalem Talmud contains two Tractates. The first Tractate, "Documents", treats divorce law and principles of agency when written documents are required. Collateral topics are the rules for documents of manumission, those for sealed documents whose contents may be hidden from witnesses, the rules by which the divorced wife can collect the moneys due her, the requirement that both divorcer and divorcee be of sound mind, and the rules of conditional divorce. The second Tractate, "Nazirites", describes the Nasirean vow and is the main rabbinic source about the impurity of the dead. As in all volumes of this edition, a (Sephardic rabbinic) vocalized text is presented, with parallel texts used as source of variant readings. A new translation is accompanied by an extensive commentary explaining the rabbinic background of all statements and noting Talmudic and related parallels. Attention is drawn to the extensive Babylonization of the Gittin text compared to genizah texts.

These papers address the central question of how classical Christian images of Jews have been acted out or muted in interreligious encounters in the USA. The book is organized according to the salient issues that divide Jews from the Christian majority, with sections on anti-Semitism.

The Jewish community has lost some of the most sensitive spiritual souls of this generation. They are Jews who were looking for God and found spiritual homes outside of Judaism. Their journeys traversed the Jewish community, but nothing there beckoned them. The creation of synagogue-communities in which the voices of seekers can be heard and their questions can be asked will challenge many loyalist Jews. It will upset and enrage them. But it would also enrich them. from Chapter 18

In this fresh look at the spiritual possibilities of American Jewish life, Rabbi Sidney Schwarz presents the framework for a new synagogue model the synagogue community and its promise to transform our understanding of the synagogue and its potential for modern Judaism.

Schwarz profiles four innovative synagogues one from each of the major movements of Judaism that have had extraordinary success with their approach to congregational life and presents practical ways to replicate their success.

Includes a discussion guide for study groups and book clubs as well as a new afterword by the author describing developments in synagogue change projects since the book was first published.

Gellman presents a new theology of the Jews as the Chosen People, addressing self-serving ethnocentric supremacy, cultural isolation, and defamation of religions other than Judaism. This book is traditional in taking chosenness and the truth of Judaism seriously, and in eschewing a theology of multiple covenants. At the same time, it is critical, rejecting previous concepts of chosenness, and innovative, offering for the twenty-first century a fresh way of seeing the Jews' place in the world. On this foundation, Gellman suggests a new approach to inter-religious understanding from a Jewish point of view, and examines the impact of his proposal on traditional Jewish liturgy.

For nearly four millennia Judaism was essentially a unified religious system based on shared traditions. Despite the emergence of various sub-groups through the centuries such as the Sadducees, Pharisees, Essenes, Karaites, Shabbateans and Hasadim, Jewry was united in the belief in a providential God who had chosen the Jews as his special people and given them a code of law. In the modern period, however, the Jewish religion has fragmented into a series of separate denominations with competing ideologies and theological views. Despite the creation of the State of Israel, the Jewish people are deeply divided concerning the most fundamental issues of belief and practice. Judaism Today gives an account of the nature of traditional Judaism, provides an introduction to the various divisions that currently exist in the Jewish world and identifies and discusses contemporary issues with which the Jewish faith engages in the twenty-first century. This refreshing new approach focuses on how Judaism is actually perceived and practised by Jews themselves and the problems currently facing Jews worldwide.

The present volume provides a comparative look at the contents and layout features of secondary annotations in biblical manuscripts across linguistic traditions. Due to the privileged focus on the text in the columns, these annotations and the practices that produced them have not received the scholarly attention they deserve. The vast richness of extant verbal and figurative notes accompanying the biblical texts in the intercolumns and margins of the manuscript pages have thus been largely overlooked. The case studies gathered in this volume explore Jewish and Christian biblical manuscripts through the lens of their annotations, addressing the various relationships between the primary layer of text and the secondary notes, and exploring the roles and functions of annotated manuscripts as cultural artifacts. By approaching biblical manuscripts as potential "notepads", the volume offers theoretical reflection and empirical analyses of the ways in which secondary notes may shed new light on the development and transmission of text traditions, the shifting engagement with biblical manuscripts over time, as well as the change of use and interpretation that may result from the addition of the notes themselves.

This book discusses the origin and development of the Talmud.

"Scribes and Translators is a critical reflection on the textual pluralism as reflected in the book of Kings.
The first part of the book examines the diverse texts transmitted by the manuscripts. Special attention is paid to the Antiochene text of the Septuagint that is being edited in Madrid. The second part is devoted to the analysis of Old Latin readings, transmitted by a Spanish family of Vulgate Bibles, with no support in any of the known manuscripts. Finally, the whole evidence is discussed in the frame of the plurality of texts confirmed by the Qumran documents for those books.
Based on Old Latin material recently published it sheds light on the text transmission of Kings and on the translation techniques and the history of the Biblical texts in general.

The question isn't whether grace is there for you in Judaism.The question is, do you have the courage to accept it?

"Chesed isn't a reward; it is reality. God s grace isn t limited to what we want to happen or might like to happen. God s grace is what is happening whether we like it or not. In short, God s grace is the giving of all to all." from the Introduction

Ask almost any Jew whether grace is a central concept in Judaism and an essential element in living Jewishly and, chances are, their answer will be no. But that s the wrong answer. This fascinating foray into God s love freely given offers you regardless of your level of Jewish involvement a way to answer that question in the affirmative.

Drawing from ancient and contemporary, traditional and non-traditional Jewish wisdom, this book reclaims the idea of grace in Judaism in three ways: It offers a view of God that helps you understand what grace is, why grace is, and how grace manifests in the world.It sets forth a reading of Judaism that is grace-filled: an understanding of creation, Shabbat and other Jewish practices from a grace-filled perspective.It challenges you to be embraced and transformed by grace, and to live life as a vehicle for God s grace, thereby fulfilling the promise of being created in God s image and likeness.

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Marc A. Krell analyzes the theologies of four twentieth-century Jewish thinkers - Hans Joachim Schoeps, Franz Rosenzweig, Richard Rubenstein, and Irving Greenberg - who have constructed theologies based on their interaction with Christian thought and culture. Their work reflects a common attempt to understand the impact of Christian culture on the historical events prior to and following the Holocaust, and to re-evaluate the relationship between the two religions in light of a history of theological anti-Judaism and modern, racial antisemitism. Krell argues that in their attempts to clarify Jewish identity in relation to Christianity, these thinkers reveal that the boundaries between the two faiths have always been blurred. The writing of these theologians illustrates a historical pattern in which Jewish theologies emerge out of a religious and cultural interchange with Christianity.

The olive harvest in Israel is a special time. See how the tiny spring flowers blossom into green fruit, then ripen into shiny black olives. Watch the olives as they're gathered, sorted, and pressed into oil. Then celebrate Hanukkah with an Israeli family, as they use the oil to light their Hanukkah menorah. Come and enjoy the harvest of light.